On Media

WaPo's Marty Baron: 'Wonkblog' will remain

By DYLAN BYERS

02/05/2014 06:32 PM EST

Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron said Wednesday that the Post will continue to invest in Wonkblog, the policy analysis blog formerly edited by Ezra Klein, and that my doubts about its future prospects were "silly and ill-informed, even kooky."

"Wonkblog is a well-established name in the policy arena, and it will remain so," Baron wrote in an email to POLITICO. "The Post invested heavily in Wonkblog over the years and had budgeted even more resources for this year."

The Post has yet to name a successor to Klein, who left late last month to launch a new venture with Vox Media and, as of Wednesday, has hired the majority of his Wonkblog team. In a statement earlier today, Baron said the Post leadership is "confident in our ability to fill open positions with highly skilled journalists."

Earlier on Wednesday, I posited that the next editor of Wonkblog would be in an unenviable position given the competition from other well-known analytical journalists, including Klein, Nate Silver (at ESPN), David Leonhardt (at The New York Times) and even Jim Tankersley, who has been tasked with launching a new policy-focused initiative at the Post.

Baron said that Wonkblog won't compete with Tankersley's new initiative but "will be working cooperatively with it." As for the competition, Baron argued that there is competition in every field and that the Post "can compete successfully with anyone on this terrain. Just watch us."

"Wonkblog will be fully staffed, which is to say that it will have even greater staff than before," Baron wrote. "That’s because we had included extra staff in the 2014 budget, as well as extra photo and graphics support for all our blogs."

Last week, Baron sent a memo to staff announcing that 2014 would be a year of "growth and digital transformation," including the addition of new staffers on the post's blogs.

Baron declined to discuss who the new editor of Wonkblog would be, nor would he say when that decision would be made.

"It’s simply unrealistic to expect that we would have named an editor this quickly," he explained. "We’ll take the time to make sure we name the right person. The process is moving along briskly, but we’re not rushing things. There is no need to, and it would be unwise to do so."